Do you think 10.9 is really coming in 2013?

I just love it when I talk about potential future roadmaps and people complain that the current version is useless to them, and reading between the lines of those replies they suggest that they will not accept any future updates.

I just love it when someone expresses concern over a proposed idea and some smug asshole has to come along and trot out "well you're just afraid of change!" and then follows up with a straw man for good measure. Oh wait, no I don't.

Quote:

…or we could consider the possibility that we could achieve the same goal in a different way, perhaps even more efficient

Don't confuse "efficient" with "discoverable". For many tasks the command line remains by far the most efficient tool -- for an expert. A command line is also about as undiscoverable as it gets. Of course, there are plenty of times where it's possible to have both, but particularly in the context of iOS (and that is the context, since what FoO highlighted from ZnU's post was "as with iOS or Windows 8") it's perfectly reasonable to be concerned that Apple would choose discoverability even at the expense of efficiency.

No, you are mistaking what my post was about, it was the only sane response any sane person could make to your comment. You managed to bring three logical fallacies into your comment and I had to fish for more information why you base your feelings on future potential change on a feature you do not like today.

I haven't. Efficient and discoverable are not entirely separable either, discoverability is a subset of efficiency which is a subset of usability. I'd like to hear you bring forward a rational argument for why the post above made your knickers feel too tight.

Late edit: I want to say that I too am afraid of change, for example: I am afraid that Jony is going to bring too much visual consistency and more desaturated icons (e.g. resulting in low discoverability), as well as his ability to hide complexity and "advanced features" (like SD cards on hard to reach spots). Hardware guys in a software world is a gamble imo. I'm also a bit mad about the lack of a spatial finder, which probably puts me in greybeard territory.

It should also be noted that "efficiency" is mostly about perception. People used to the command line found it extremely efficient, and the mouse cumbersome and clunky, while extensive studies proved back in the 80s that users operating the mouse were actually FASTER than command-line jockeys performing the same tasks.

Now, I would like to see a merging of their codebases, in essence making one OS. But they need to be smart about it, and on a desktop or laptop keep the more traditional OS X UI. On tablets and phones you keep the touch-based iOS UI.

Isn't that...exactly what they already have right now? iOS is OS X, with the unnecessary-for-mobile parts stripped out and a touch-based UI on top. In fact, they even used to say that the iPhone ran "OS X" before they changed the name to iPhone OS, and then later iOS.

Yes, this is my understanding as well.

This talk of streamlining development by converging the systems is backwards. The systems started out as ONE, and the parts that are necessarily different for the completely different interfaces have DIverged over time.

The fact that we are seeing some form of "convergent evolution" as the two systems evolve surface feature parity does not mean that the underlying systems are being melded any more than they were from the start.

It's true that on large screen devices it wouldn't make a ton of sense to get rid of the Dock and replace it will a full screen launcher UI. I wouldn't expect the Dock to go away. Although as Apple moves toward eliminating the user-level distinctions between open and closed apps, the way its contents are determined might change. For instance, maybe we'll see it divided into a 'quick launch' area of persistent items, plus an area that behaves like the iOS task switcher, simply showing the most recently accessed apps in order of when they were last accessed.

The bigger issue, I think, it that Apple seems to clearly want to de-emphesize local file systems. This has already started showing up in OS X in the form of bundled apps that e.g. want to save to iCloud by default, and allow files to be renamed and moved from directly within the app. Having the Finder be the 'face' of the OS (in an almost comically literal sense; its icon is the Mac OS face logo) makes no sense in that context. So the question is, if you're not going to display the Finder UI at boot, what do you display? Hypothetically the answer is nothing — you could just have the system boot to a blank desktop, with a Dock, from which you could either launch apps directly (if they were in your Dock) or access a launcher that showed all the apps on the system (including presumably the Finder, when you wanted it). Dumping the user at a mostly blank screen at startup seems like wasting an opportunity to present useful information there, though. So perhaps in addition to the Dock you have some widget-like capability on that initial screen, possibly evolved from the present-day Dashboard.

The Default has been to boot users to a blank desktop for some time now, hasn't it? (Apart from the change to restoring the exact state from before a reboot, starting in Lion).

The Finder always is launched at boot. Desktop Finder icons appear (which contributes to making the Finder the conceptual 'root' of the UI — it controls what's displayed at the UI's 'first' layer) and any open Finder windows are restored. This has always been the case; it's not just a consequence of recent versions of OS X re-launching open apps at boot. The Finder also shares its logo with the OS, doesn't have a 'Quit' command, automatically re-launches if possible if it does quit for some reason, and is always the first item in the Dock, impossible to move or relocate.

All of these things set the Finder apart form 'normal' apps, and make it in some sense the face of the OS. None of them is strictly required for the Finder to perform its basic functions, so with Apple de-emphesizing the file system we may see some or all of them go away.

The Default has been to boot users to a blank desktop for some time now, hasn't it? (Apart from the change to restoring the exact state from before a reboot, starting in Lion).

The Finder always is launched at boot. Desktop Finder icons appear (which contributes to making the Finder the conceptual 'root' of the UI — it controls what's displayed at the UI's 'first' layer) and any open Finder windows are restored.

The desktop is completely blank by default, though, and I don't believe a Finder window is opened at initial launch.

The Finder hasn't been the "face" of the Mac in the sense it was under System 1 to Mac OS 9, for some years now.

The desktop is completely blank by default, though, and I don't believe a Finder window is opened at initial launch.

The Finder hasn't been the "face" of the Mac in the sense it was under System 1 to Mac OS 9, for some years now.

It's actually only with Mountain Lion where desktop icons for devices were disabled by default; this is a further indication that Apple has recently started moving in this sort of direction. As is the fact that in Mountain Lion the boot volume no longer even appears in the Finder sidebar by default.

However, Mountain Lion still shows any non-device items the user has placed on the desktop. In other words, the root level of the UI is still a file system location; the UI is still conceptually rooted in the file system.

Jony, or not, the UI design will change in a very Apple way:- they'll simply refine a lot of it- get rid of a couple bad ideas- introduce a couple new design twists that will lay the path to wider use in the next release

Yeah, I agree. Just because Ive is in charge, I don't think that means they're going to throw everything out and start over. I see it much more likely that Ive will continue to refine what's already there, with a few new things that set the direction for future changes.

Now, I would like to see a merging of their codebases, in essence making one OS. But they need to be smart about it, and on a desktop or laptop keep the more traditional OS X UI. On tablets and phones you keep the touch-based iOS UI.

Isn't that...exactly what they already have right now? iOS is OS X, with the unnecessary-for-mobile parts stripped out and a touch-based UI on top. In fact, they even used to say that the iPhone ran "OS X" before they changed the name to iPhone OS, and then later iOS.

It used to be, in the beginning, yes. But since releasing the iPhone parts of iOS have branched off from OS X, and now some of that has been merged back into OS X over the last couple of years with 10.7 and 10.8.

I'm ok with this, as long as they don't go the Windows 8 route, and try to tack on a touch interface to a desktop OS. You can merge the two OSes, but do it in such a way that the touch interface only appears on touch based devices. And if you can seamlessly shift from desktop to touch UI by flipping your laptop screen around and converting it into a tablet, go for it.

irfoton wrote:

Although I don't want OS X to become iOS I would like to be able to run iOS apps on my Mac.

I'd intended to say the same thing on my initial post. Thought I had actually, but I'm dumb apparently

Since iOS development generally takes place in an iPhone emulator built into Xcode, I could absolutely see them building that emulator into the OS that will allow you to sign in with your Apple ID and grab iOS apps that you think would be beneficial in a desktop environment, either ones you've already purchased or buy new ones. iPhone apps could run in a 960x480 90º rotatable window, or stretch to full screen, same with iPad apps only with a 1024x768 window or full screen w/ retina resolution scaled up or down for whatever sized screen it's filling. Developers could even offer a 3rd UI layout in their universal apps: iPhone, iPad, and 16x10 landscape for fullscreen on a desktop. All the better if Apple ever gives us proper resolution independence and vector UI elements that don't care if the screen is 960x480, 2048x1536, 1280x800, 1920x1200, or 2560x1440... and beyond.

And get the iOS apps out of iTunes and merge them into the MAS... but before doing that, a few things need to be updated on the MAS:

1: Give us a goddamn wish list. The damn thing has been around almost 3 years now, and iTunes had a wish list for even longer, even for iOS apps. WTF, Apple?

2: With an iPhone/iPad emulator built into the OS, there's no need to filter apps other than some indicator that a particular app is native iPhone/iPad, and thus intended for touch and may not work well with mouse/keyboard. But the app store on iOS devices definitely needs to filter OUT the Mac apps, so someone browsing from their iPhone/iPad doesn't buy an app for a desktop computer thinking it's going to run on the iOS device. Particularly people who have an iPhone but no Mac and wouldn't be able to run the Mac apps anyway.

3: App data syncing. Either by iCloud or Dropbox syncing, or local syncing via your computer for larger data such as iMovie files, I don't much care. But I think it's ridiculous the number of universal apps that you open on your iPhone and you have one set of data, and on your iPad you have a completely different set. Yes I know some apps are finally starting to sync with iCloud, but far too many still do not.

4: App data sharing/portability. If I have a PDF in dropbox that I "Open in GoodReader", it should open the PDF directly rather than what it currently does in duplicating and copying the PDF to GoodReader's data pool. I should not now have two copies of that PDF, especially two copies that are now different if I make any annotations in GoodReader. This still confuses and frustrates my dad even though he's had an iPhone and iPad for about 3 years now. He drops PDFs in Dropbox on his computer, opens them in GoodReader on his iPad, makes annotations, and then tries to open them in Dropbox on his computer again and calls me up wondering why the changes didn't save. I've already set all his folders in GoodReader to sync with Dropbox, but every time he sets up a new folder in Dropbox he goes through the same thing and I have to walk him through adding that folder to GoodReader and setting it to sync. Camera/photo editing apps need to stop using their own libraries, and save directly to the camera roll. And any edits need to save as a new file to the camera roll. This shouldn't have to be an extra step that a user might overlook and then wonder when they sync their photos to their computer, why all the edits they've made aren't showing up.

Not saying we need Finder-like access to the file system (though I certainly wouldn't hate that), but apps definitely need to be able to more freely share their data back and forth.

My MBP lasts about 4 hours while browsing/fucking around. I dream of how long the battery life would be if there wasn't a bunch of OS X overhead floating around.

Probably not all that much more. It's possible to make a ridiculously lean install of something like Arch Linux, but it has a statistically insignificant effect on battery life. Battery life depends on the tasks you do, not the OS you run. Android has worse battery life because it allows you to run more than one task at a time.

Similar ideas have been done in the Windows PC world, don't see it much anymore and don't know anyone that actually took advantage of it. I can't think of a specific implementation off the top of my head but I know I've at least seen it on a batch of Dell Latitude E4300 laptops we had at one time. Don't remember anyone actually using it, ever.

Doesn't mean Apple can't do it better, just don't think it would be widely used. I mean OS X wakes from sleep pretty fast even on a mechanical drive so most people are just going to open their laptops and do what they need to do and go on about their business rather than reboot into a different system just to save battery life.

Anything that moves our UI or experience in the direction of Windows 8, or takes control away from me (Desktop on Cloud?? No f-ing thanks!), and I'll stick with ML until another release comes out reversing the trend. That said it's hard to believe Apple would take even a single cue from MS' latest system. Not trying to be BF-ish but Windows 8 is possibly the worst OS they've ever made. Which was a shock because: a) they've made some pretty shitty OSes over the years; and b) I thought Windows 7 was / is pretty darn good compared to the older OSes they made IMO. I had hoped they'd build on that success because there was a chance I'd be migrating some of my work that way if Apple dropped the ball on the Mac Pro.

But as usual MS had zero creativity / vision. Not every device is a tablet / phone / swipe-happy gadget. Once again MS failed the Form Follows Function test and the "what problem do all these slide-happy colorful boxes solve" test, and slapped a bunch of crap together with lots of snappy transitions so they could have ads with 20-somethings break-dancing on boardroom tables.

WHat I'm most curious about with 10.9 (and whatever comes after that) is: will it be more of the same modest, evolutationary changes (example: add a bunch of other social media besides Twitter to the "Notifications Center" concept and call it "a new feature" .... vs. completely overhaling Finder / Spaces / Expose (all optional of course). I tend to think we've reached a point (a few years ago actually) where all the new features will be iOS tie-ins or just evolutionary changes. I don't think we'll ever see a "new paradigm" the way OS X was a new paradigm over OS 9 and earlier. Not until we get rid of desktop computing all together, which is a long ways off.

More concerned about where 10.8.3 is 8.2 brought me audio issues that made it useless for media duties.

Really?

My studio system is finally crackle-free with 10.8.2 and the most current Metric Halo drivers that actually work around Apple's broken FireWire audio driver.

Yes, for video playback, I get audio stutters after a period of playback. sound eventually drops out. Music and other audio seems fine, Diablo 3 exhibits the issues as well, I've made sure I've removed all 3rd party codecs and still persists. There's a huge thread on apple discussions about it.

I don't think we'll ever see a "new paradigm" the way OS X was a new paradigm over OS 9 and earlier.

I'll bite: how was OS X a "new paradigm" over OS 9? It added memory protection, preemptive multitasking and "Aqua", but kept a lot of the OS 9 UI concepts in place, albeit slightly evolved in places. When I look at OS X (in this case, let's say 10.0.0) and compare with OS 9, I see a very slick UI, but most of the same concepts.

don't think they're going to make their every year promise at this rate. Should have seen something by now - at least the developers. OR maybe it will be a minor and free upgrade. I wouldn't mind a Leopard to Snow Leopard like update.

It should also be noted that "efficiency" is mostly about perception. People used to the command line found it extremely efficient, and the mouse cumbersome and clunky, while extensive studies proved back in the 80s that users operating the mouse were actually FASTER than command-line jockeys performing the same tasks.

I don't think that's right. The research showed that using a mouse was objectively faster than using keyboard shortcuts inside a GUI app, which is not the same as using the command line.

Very little chance it will slide beyond 2013 for release, only a question of when in 2013, which is up for debate.

I don't know why you say this. OSX 10.9 was probably looking at a fallish release if everything went well. If the rumors are true and engineers have been pulled from 10.9 to work on iOS 7 then an early 2014 release does not seem that improbable to me.

Brad: I put "new paradigm" in quotes because I was at a loss for a better descriptor even though the one I used wasn't 100% accurate. One could consider OS X a new paradigm or new way of doing things (especially over time) if you look at the totality of the Dock, Spaces / Expose, Dashboard, etc. Basically we had new ways of accessing information and apps that as they evolved became more efficient than what we had with OS 9. Certainly under the hood, things were much more efficient as you mention. So what I'm suggesting is, 10.9 and OS XI will continue the trend of updating existing OS X features, perhaps with a "new skin". I don't think we'll have any "brand new ways of doing things", the way OS X had them compared ot OS 9.

Examples: we could get a Dock that does more stuff or does something better, or Notifications for Google+ in addition to Twitter, or a new version of Spaces... but none of that is really new, it's all improvements on existing stuff despite Apple's usual "250 New Features" BS.

backtomac, others: I say it because I suspect 10.9 is a lot closer to being finished than iOS 7, and so they can afford to take people off the team (if it's true at all) without pushing the release date back many months. Remember 10.9 has been showing up on server logs for many months now. Not like whatever we're getting is in its infancy as a development product. We're very likely to see a full demo at WWDC and a release later this summer IMO.

don't think they're going to make their every year promise at this rate. Should have seen something by now - at least the developers. OR maybe it will be a minor and free upgrade. I wouldn't mind a Leopard to Snow Leopard like update.

They will need to do something this year so that Johnny Ive can pull out all the skeuomorphism.

don't think they're going to make their every year promise at this rate. Should have seen something by now - at least the developers. OR maybe it will be a minor and free upgrade. I wouldn't mind a Leopard to Snow Leopard like update.

They will need to do something this year so that Johnny Ive can pull out all the skeuomorphism.

As much as I'm a new Mac user, I would like to see 10.9 be a consolidation update rather than "OMG!! New Features!!" which is my perception of Lion and Mountain Lion.

I would expect that there will be even more emphasis on touch in 10.9, i.e. more support for touchpads vs mice.

Some may see this as iOSification, but I think it's just a more consistent approach. Personally I would love there to be more interaction between OS X and iOS - answering phone calls from my Mac, for example.

Seriously, though: It wouldn't surprise me if Apple moves to free OS X updates down the line, which removes to push each release with a specific name.

I was wondering myself if they'll move to completely free major updates one day...it seems like only a matter of time. The price has dropped from $129 (10.0 through 10.5, excluding 10.1) to $29 (10.6 and 10.7) to $19 (10.8).

Major iOS updates are always free, so why not do the same for OS X? The quicker the adoption of a new version, the better.